Airbnb Hosting Tips from the Cruise Industry

welcome back to the show let's go ahead and jump into it my biggest takeaways from being on a cruise ship for 15 days they have so many so many things that they do exceptionally well and we can apply these in our short-term rental and we should be applying these in our short-term rentals because communication and service is really what it comes down to when someone leaves a review so I've got my my top uh takeaways but before we do that I wanted to just sort of

spell out the short-term rental Journey you could say when you first start with the short-term rental it is imperative that you get good reviews it can literally make or break your investment I I say this all the time but I'm going to say it again you can have two short-term rentals right next to each other one can literally be making twice as much money because they have a bigger base of reviews and a much higher uh and they do a better job of listing their property

so there's a lot of things that go into that as you know we talk about those here every week and quick actionable episodes um but it really is it's like a journey and so when I start a brand new short ter rental let's just take the first two months for example we have to get those perfect and just like the cruise industry they have to get it right as well uh and so I'm excited to get into these takeaways but I just want you to think

about when you're starting your short-term rental if you're out there and you're just getting started really we have to invest into these first two months and make sure that our guests love the stay and if something comes up at our short-term rental we have to be there and we have to communicate with them exceptionally well so when you're getting started out there make sure you cross those tees you dot your eyes uh and you don't overlook anything uh because that meticulous detail that is what is

going to come through at the end and so the cruise industry has gotten this right I mean most cruise lines I would say have gotten this right they have thousands of guests that go in and out of their cruise ships all the time they are a well oiled machine the cruise lines have also been around for a really long time and so that repetition has allowed them to learn from their mistakes uh hopefully some of the podcasts that you've tuned into onto this show have helped

you learn from some of my mistakes cuz my team and I have managed tens of thousands of guests and we've learned a lot but that really is uh the key right is learning from our mistakes and unfortunately we don't really have that luxury when we start with a short-term rental we have to get it right in the beginning and so a lot of times when someone starts a property they uncover these little things that they missed and so we can save ourselves if we have excellent

communication but the idea is to make sure that we don't have any of those little imperfections so let's go ahead and jump into some of the things that I took away from this Cruise and hopefully you can Implement these into your existing Properties or if you're planning on launching one sometime in the near future you can add these as well and these takeaways they're a bit random you could say I mean they're just things that I noticed on the cruise are like yep we should have

these there yep we already have these there uh and so the first one are notes so I've talked about this before but having notes in our properties especially for things that aren't super intuitive you know if one of your guests might not know exactly how to operate your thermost for example well you should leave a little note there to let them know how to do that some of the places where the cruise ship had these labeled were in the shower for example it said make sure

to test the temperature before you get in uh or on the electrical outlet next to the sink it said for not for hair dryers or it had certain things labeled and I know I've got a lot of old properties actually if you're watching the video version of this you can see this brick wall behind me I'm in one of my properties in uh Tennessee at the moment and this house is probably like 100 years old I don't remember the exact date actually of this I think

it's like 1925 or 27 or something like that so it is quite hold of course a lot of our guests love the historic uh piece of it but part of having an older property if it hasn't been 100% renovated sometimes you have these issues like if we have too many people plug in hair dryers then it can flip a breaker and so leaving little notes uh for anything that's not intuitive or anything that might come up with your guess that can save a lot of questions

if you just have it right there in the property we recommend using one of those little Doo label makers you can just print it out there on the spot the second thing that the cruise industry does an excellent job of again they've been doing this for decades and decades uh and they've had millions and millions of guests come through is that their properties and their Furniture are designed to have a lot of guests coming through so as we know our furniture and our short-term rentals gets

a lot of wear and tear right we have different types of people different sizes of people coming through and using it and so we want to make sure that we have very durable Furniture the couch for example uh in my opinion that is the most difficult Furniture item we actually did a whole episode on that so go back to strr riches and check that out uh for some of my tips around adding a couch but if you get a cheap couch um or you get a

couch that has a certain type of fabric or material over another one it's not going to last and a couch isn't an easy item to change and so we need to give a lot of thought into the furniture that actually goes into our properties and the wear and tear so that we don't have to block our properties for a certain amount of time while we're repairing furniture and we also don't want that as part of our guest experience we don't want them exper experiencing a wobbly

table or a wobbly chair or a bed that's squeaks or anything like that and so having the appropriate furniture and really giving thought to that is going to make make your experience a lot better so the third thing that I took away uh and this is one that they nail and it's one that we should have down pat as well and that is communication so communication really is the name of the game communication and service right uh there was 2,000 guests on this cruise ship that

I was on and there was over a th000 employees so if you can imagine that that's that's a lot of employees per guest right they remember your names they remember your preferences they do all these things to make you feel more special really is what it comes down to uh and that's what a guess wants right that's the way our guests should feel so our guests are not always right but I do believe and I heard this quote somewhere that it is our responsibility to make

them feel that way so we have to have excellent excellent uh service and communication with our guests I feel really fortunate that our guest experience experienced team leader worked on a cruise line for 13 years Norwegian Cruise Lines she managed a lot of people underneath her and now she manages Our Guest experience team which also has uh we've actually got two people that we brought on from the cruise industry but she does an excellent job uh the this the cruise industry knows what they're doing they've

done this before they know how to get service right and so I feel really fortunate to have her on her team if you guys didn't know yet by the way uh we are managing other properties and I would happy to chat with you to see if your property would make a good fit with our team the same team that manages my portfolio you can head to rest methods.com there's a little Property Management button there couple quick questions we can schedule Zoom link um so they get

their communication it's five stars I mean it's truly amazing the next piece that I took away and this is one I talk about a lot is technology and so technology is one of those things that can be a huge timesaver it can make make things much more efficient both for us as owners and for our guests uh the cruise line that I was on has this new cool technology called uh The Medallion app that they use so basically everything you did on the cruise line was

just through one app it unlocked your door before you even got there you could order from anywhere on the ship and they'd bring your uh drinks or food or whatever it happens to be you didn't have to give them your room number so if a waiter came around and asked if you would like a drink or whatever happens to be your name pops up on their screen and your image and so they know exactly who they're talking to it saves time it makes things more efficient

and I'm sure they sell a little more that way too so technology is one of those things that should be helping us on on both sides it's something that uh fortunately in the short-term rental industry there's so many new programs coming up uh we use a lot of those uh I'm a big proponent of Technology but again we have to make sure that uh we still have that guest experience first right no one wants to be talking to a robot so technolog is huge I'm excited

to see what we have just in uh just in this next year really uh the next piece is also a bit of Technology but it doesn't have to be and so that sounds a little confusing but I'm talking about guide books and recommendations so this is something that the cruise industry obviously does as well right and they sell a lot of the tours and the things that they do um but they do a really good job of making that information available and they do do it

in two different places so they have a digital type guide book actually the TVs in each of the rooms on the cruise you can view options tours and things like that but they also each night would lay out a printed one sheet of the available options for the following day or the for the next day that we're on Shore so uh if you've been listening to podcast for a while you know that we've used guide books for a long time we use a company called host

fully uh to set up ours they're digital they're amazing but we also have printed out one pagers I call them in all of my properties and then all the properties that we're currently working with that has the top three uh restaurant recommendations I like to put top three Cafe recommendations in there any places you can walk to uh and then the the big highlights for that particular Market just a short uh page not to overwhelm anyone uh but to give them one other spot to find

our recommendations the sixth big takeaway from being on a cruise for a little over a couple weeks is how important the team is how important our team is right because we can't do this alone for sure if we have uh one property the more properties we have the harder it gets right so we we could do this alone when we get started but not everyone wants to be cleaning their property and doing all those things so it's really really important to have a good team and

there was someone on the cruise ship working in one of the uh dining areas that have been with the the crews for over 50 years if you can believe that uh uh the dedication to the company but also the way the company treats that employee right no one's most of the time going to be working for a company for so long if they don't enjoy it if they don't feel that it's fair and so make sure that you're being really fair with your team that works

with you that helps you with your properties that you're being grateful for them uh our we can't do this without our housekeeping team our maintenance our reception every step of the way is really really important so if you haven't thanked them lately well now's a good time to do that just reach out and say thanks hey I really appreciate all your help um and make sure that things are fair the seventh big takeaway uh and this is a really important one we sort of started off

the episode talking about reviews and our reputation with a short-term rental and they did this really well too so uh they very often mention hey we'd love your feedback they left printed feedback forms in the properties uh of course they have the digital version where they send you emails and do all that but they actually verbally talked about it quite a few times hey I would we'd really appreciate it if your staff's doing a great job um please leave them a nine or 10 review so

this is out of 10 right and I love the way that they frame this right because some people with Airbnb for example if they leave a four-star review they might think oh that was a great stay I'm going to leave it a four out of five that's pretty good but that's not pretty good for us as hosts right a fourstar average is that's that's a B minus that's not very good people aren't booking four star averages and so we've talked about that before you may want

to send out a personalized message to your guests uh the ones that haven't left you reviews yet and say hey we' really appreciate your feedback uh for us a fstar means this a four star means this but having that visible inside your property is a really good step too hey we hope that we're doing everything right uh if we're not please let us know uh we want to make sure that your stay is perfect so getting that feedback is super super crucial and we know it's

a fact that the more reviews you have on the listing platforms and the better that review score is the higher up you're going to go in the search results so really important to be getting those reviews and to be getting good reviews so just a couple parting words uh for the episode today um I I try to learn a little bit every time I stay in an accommodation and it was no different with the cruise lines there's some really really good uh takeaways uh the biggest

one being service but we can always improve right uh the one thing that I would say that they could and I really had to search for something for them to improve on but a couple nights when the boat was rocking out there in the sea and it wasn't super steady the hangers were squeaking it's like it was really nothing right but it it could disturb your sleep I just took the hangers off the thing and put them on the floor um but that is feedback maybe

they change the way that they make their hangers in the future because if it happened to me I'm sure it happen to other guests as well and this is why the private feedback that we get in our reviews is super super important uh it's not the part that gets publicly posted but it's the part where someone enjo enjoyed the St but maybe the hangers are squeaking and they wanted you to know about it we need to act on those we need to fix that make sure

our properties are perfect so we can always improve I thought that Princess Cruise lands did a fantastic job it was truly truly an awesome trip and just one last tip for those of you out there that haven't actually stayed in your property yet uh I highly suggest that because that's how we learn about some of the little things that maybe our guests aren't telling us and it's even more crucial to do that before you launch your property so I hope that gave you a little bit

of insight these are things we've talked about before uh but important in any sort of hos Hospitality setting right also if you didn't know uh now you can get really good Wi-Fi out in the open Seas so the remote work limits have been stretched once again uh which is a big uh demand Factor leading to a lot of short-term rentals right people can work wherever they want for the most part now so I hope that gave you a little bit Insight hope you've been enjoying the

podcast if you have and you haven't left us a review yet I'd really appreciate that any feedback whatsoever for me so I can make sure that I'm bringing you the best content possible I'd really appreciate that if you found an episode that you've enjoyed or that's helped you if you don't mind just taking a screenshot of it and send it to one of your friends that's interested or a family member or someone in the industry that you think it might help and until next time I

hope you have a fabulous week want to get on the fast track to Financial Freedom through short-term rentals what all starts with the properties you acquire but you want to make sure that you acquire the right properties I want to give you my ebook that will show you how to do just that there is no charge it's my gift to you for being one of our subscribers just go to rest methods.com that's reest methods.com